Multinational website - best practice

[WebGain]

Hello,

I am researching a lot on this subject and have read several articles here on Moz and elsewhere about the best practices for multinational websites. But I'm not yet convinced on what would be the best solution in my case.

Today we have the following websites (examples):
website.com which function as a global website.
website.dk which is for the danish market
website.no which is for the norwegian market

Some of the content on these websites are the same (but different languages; english, danish and norwegian). We want to expand the business to more countries and work with ccTLDs. Both to countries which speaks languages that we don't have content for yet (an example could be Poland), but also more countries that speaks english, like Great Britain (with a .co.uk domain) and Australia (with a .com.au domain). We expect to expand in many countries (as many as it makes sense to do).

I have read a lot about the alternative hreflang tag which would look like and that seems like a good solution, but I have a couple of questions that I hope you guys can answer:

1. Should the alternate hreflang tags show every existing language versions including the one you're on or only show the alternative versions?
2. Do we risk penalty by having identical or almost identical content for same language websites (could be UK and the global .com one) if we use the alternate hreflang tags? I'm aware that we should use the native spellings and sentences in each country.
3. Would the sitemap solution be better in our case?
4. We have the same link structure for all websites, but the sub-directories can differ due to their language (like /articles/ is /artikler/ in danish) - is that an issue?
5. Will hreflang="en" function as global english? (so searching users that we don't have a local website for will see that).

[WebGain]

I have an additional question, that I haven't been able to find an answer for elsewhere.

How does Google determine which version is the right one to show for each user? Is it by IP? I mean, in my example we could have an american user that is on vacation in UK. Would he see the .com or .uk result?
It could also be a norwegian user on vacation in Denmark, would he see the .no or .dk results? (danish and norwegian is fairly similar and has a lot of common spellings).

[WebGain]

Thank you for this in depth answer. It's a great help (yours too, Marie).

[gfiorelli1]

Marie... you're answers are not totally correct.

Please, see my answer below.

[gfiorelli1]

Here my answers, that partly correct what others answered already (not that they were wrong, but not totally exact).

• Should the alternate hreflang tags show every existing language versions including the one you're on or only show the alternative versions?

Not really. Let me explain.

• In the case of websites/subfolders/subdomains, which share the same language (eg: USA, UK, AU or ES, MX, AR), using hreflang for every language-country is a must.

• In the case you have also single websites/subfolders/subdomains that use a unique language (eg.: Italian, which is practically used only in Italy), than you can avoid to add its related hreflang annotation in internal URLs. You should still use it for the home page and every page that may target a not-Italian keyword: I say this so to not see the local site outranked by the most powerful version (usually the English-USA one).

• In every case you must always implement the hreflang the self-referral annotation (the one you're on, as you defined it).

1. Do we risk penalty by having identical or almost identical content for same language websites (could be UK and the global .com one) if we use the alternate hreflang tags? I'm aware that we should use the native spellings and sentences in each country.

No! The hreflang annotation is substantially telling Google that the versions are different and target different users/countries. Even though the differences are very tiny, they are very important (eg.: currencies)

• Would the sitemap solution be better in our case?

It depends. Both the sitemaps and code solutions are valid. The problem of the sitemaps solutions is that it may be harder to update the sitemaps.

• We have the same link structure for all websites, but the sub-directories can differ due to their language (like /articles/ is /artikler/ in danish) - is that an issue?

No! On the contrary, that's the correct thing to do. In fact, also the URLs must be localized.

• Will hreflang="en" function as global english? (so searching users that we don't have a local website for will see that).

Yes, but not with the consequences you are thinking. The "en" only hreflang annotation is telling Google to show that URL to all the English speaking users all over the world (this suggestion is override if exists, for instance, another en-US hreflang annotation).

For having also Spanish users seeing the generic English version of the website, then you should use the hreflang x-default annotation (see here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com.es/2013/04/x-default-hreflang-for-international-pages.html)

[MarieHaynes]

1. Should the alternate hreflang tags show every existing language versions including the one you're on or only show the alternative versions?

Yes, show all versions including the one that the user is on

2. Do we risk penalty by having identical or almost identical content for same language websites (could be UK and the global .com one) if we use the alternate hreflang tags? I'm aware that we should use the native spellings and sentences in each country.

Google wouldn't penalize this as duplicate content as there really isn't a duplicate content penalty. But, they'll try to pick the best version to rank. They won't rank all of them for all searches.

3. Would the sitemap solution be better in our case?

I'd still use hreflang. Your case sounds like exactly why hreflang was created.

4. We have the same link structure for all websites, but the sub-directories can differ due to their language (like /articles/ is /artikler/ in danish) - is that an issue?

I don't think so, but it's hard to say without digging in. Again, I'd use hreflang wherever appropriate.

5. Will hreflang="en" function as global english? (so searching users that we don't have a local website for will see that).

Here's from the official documentation from Google:

"

It's a good idea to provide a generic URL for geographically unspecified users if you have several alternate URLs targeted at users with the same language, but in different locales. For example, you may have specific URLs for English speakers in Ireland (en-ie), Canada (en-ca), and Australia (en-au), but want all other English speakers to see your generic English (en) page, and everyone else to see the homepage. In this case you should specify the generic English-language (en) page for searchers in, say, the UK. You can annotate this cluster of pages using a Sitemap file or using HTML link tags like this:

"